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new biocube 29

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Ok i picked up a biocube 29 from petsmart that was on sell for 30% off. its has had water in it for about a week and LR for about 5 days this is my first biocube so need help. have about 40lb of LR and im using 30LB aragonite sand. for now i dont have the money for a good protein skimmer so im going to do weekly water changes. have the bio balls in there is it good or bad? if bad what do i replace it with that kind of filters should i run? and my water flow is about 700gph and dont know what im going to stock it with right now. its got the stock lighting P.S. plan on taking my time

skip the bio-balls they become nitrate factories. Live rock is your primary filter and once you get a skimmer that's all you'll need. You can turn one of the back chambers into a refugium filled with chaeto and live rock.

Sounds like your off to a great start. What are you water parameters as of now? If ammonia and nitrite are 0 and nitrate is less then 5 then you can start adding a clean up crew

all the levels looked good sorry about the time to respond back power supply went out on the computer. im in week 3 or 4 and i have a lot of brown stuff growing on the LR ? took out the bio balls and was going to replace it with chaeto but the LFS is out?

No big rush on setting up the refugium. A lot of folks run biocubes that size without a fuge or a skimmer. As long as you keep up on changing/cleaning your mechanical filtration and your water changes, you should be fine.

The brown stuff is diatoms and part of the algae cycle of a maturing reef. Next will be green hair algae which is the worse imo followed by cyno. Keep up with water changes and keep nutrients down and they should pass in a few months.